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Part of the salary negotiation process involves arming yourself with knowledge. You, as the employer, want to make an offer that is fair to the skill level of the employee, but you also want to make sure that you’re spending as little as possible.

If you give a number, and the applicant comes back with another number, you need to know how fair that second number is before you counter, because if this is the employee you want, then you want to make sure you offer them a number that won’t cause them to walk away (now or in the future), but also isn’t more than you should be paying for someone of their calibre.

Learn the Salary Sweet Spot

Great applicants arm themselves with knowledge to address the salary negotiation process. They are going to do their research before they talk to you about salary. You should too because you need to know if you’re going to be able to offer them the right amount, when you may need to sell them on your other perks/benefits, and when you should walk away.

For that, you’ll want to look at salary websites – websites that give average salaries for the industry. While these should not be seen as gospel, and may not take into account all of the other reasons to work for your company or other factors that go into salary, they do provide you with a great starting point for your negotiations:

You may also want to do searches that are specifically related to competitors. Find out what your competitors are paying, so that you know how much you need to offer to keep this employee in your company, rather than lose them to the other.

Salary Isn’t Everything

Salary is only one part of negotiation. You can also negotiate vacation days, sick days, family care. You can also use your perks and benefits as a way to offset any salary issues. The websites above are also only estimates. You’ll still want to value the employee yourself by gauging how much they bring in and determining how much you can pay to get a strong ROI.

But arming yourself with knowledge before you negotiate is important, and the above websites will give you some assistance in the negotiation process.

http://recruitshop.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/logo_web_lrg_01.png00Saxon Marsden-Hugginshttp://recruitshop.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/logo_web_lrg_01.pngSaxon Marsden-Huggins2017-12-04 10:10:432017-10-17 17:17:085 Great Websites for Determining Average Salary for the Job/Industry

As part of your recruitment process, you will want to consider following up with everyone that applies to your organisation. You never know who may be your next great contributor, or who may know someone that will be. It’s important to make sure that you follow up with each person that applied quickly, even if it’s simply a kind rejection letter.

Below, you’ll find an example of the type of email that you can write to follow up with a candidate when they are no longer in the running for the position:

Dear {{Name}},

Thank you again for sending in your application for the {{Job}} with {{Company}}. We know you have a choice in employers, and we’re so thankful that you were willing to take the time to {send in your application/attend the interview].

One of the challenges we have as employers is that we can only hire one person, even when we receive hundreds of great applicants. At this time, we have decided to move forward with other candidates. But we don’t want you to feel as though doing so reflects in any way on you or your abilities.

We encourage you to keep an eye out on our website for other positions that may meet your needs. We’ve also added you to our database, and will give you a call if we feel a job has opened that matches your abilities. If you would like to send an updated resume in the future, please feel free and email us back at any time at this email address and we’ll update it in our database.

We really do appreciate your interest, and we hope that a match opens up in the future.

Thank you again,

{{Name of HR Staff}}

There are also many ways to edit this type of email to support your recruitment process. For example, if you currently have a job newsletter that you’d like them to sign up for, you can link to it in the email. If you are planning to offer feedback to anyone that asks for it, you can mention that as well. If you have other jobs you think they’d already be a good fit for, you can mention them in the email.

No matter what type of follow up you decide to have, it’s important to consider following up with everyone that applies in some way, and to do so quick enough that they are not waiting for weeks without hearing back. This small amount of extra effort can help to take your recruitment to the next level.

You can only hire one person. You go through the recruitment process attracting hundreds of possible applicants. You call 50 or so for a phone interview. You call back anywhere from 2 to 10 for the job interview. You call a few more for the second interview, and then select 1 from the remaining talent pool.

In the end, hundreds of people end up getting rejected. Yet each and every one of those people could potentially be a contributor in the future for a different role (or at least may know someone that is). You don’t want those people to feel upset or disappointed that they didn’t get the job offer, nor do you want them telling others that you mistreated them in some way.

Applicant Follow Up

Companies hoping for positive employer branding should consider following up with at least every applicant that was interviewed, if not every person that applied. It shows each person that they matter, and it prevents them from waiting around for you to make a decision and possibly feeling discouraged in the process.

If you’re not already following up with your applicants, you could be creating some negativity about you as an employer, in a way that could affect your hiring in the future.

Following up is important. But how you follow up can vary. Some companies choose to provide each applicant with feedback about why they didn’t get the job. This strategy can have some advantages. But it also may have disadvantages. In the end, you’ll need to consider both the benefits and the risks before you decide whether giving feedback is right for you.

Benefits of Applicant Feedback

Giving Closure – One of the greatest benefits of this type of feedback is that it provides the individual with closure that many applicants crave. This is especially true of those that have gone through the interview process. Not getting the job, but not knowing why, can make it difficult to move on and feel comfortable about what happened. Feedback gives them information that makes it easy to understand.

Opens the Door for the Future – Once someone has received feedback, they can then take that information and decide what to do with it in the future. Some will move on to other jobs. But others, especially those that really want to work for your company, will take the feedback to heart and use it to get into your company in the future.

Shows Personalisation – Most forms of follow up are deeply impersonal. The willingness and ability to give the applicants useful feedback can be seen as you caring about their satisfaction, and showing them that they really were in consideration.

Weaknesses of Applicant Feedback

Unsolicited Could Be Offensive – The greatest risk to providing feedback is accidentally offending someone that did not want it. Providing appropriate feedback can be tricky, and it would be problematic if you accidentally offended someone that would have been happier simply not getting the job.

May Not Be Realistically Actionable – When you give someone feedback, you’re telling them what they need to improve. But the things they may need to improve either may not be possible, or may still not be enough to get them the job in the future. It is also problematic if you tell them what to change, and then after they change it you still do not want to hire them.

Could Be Received Multiple Times – Feedback is likely welcomed when the person has only applied once. But if they apply to work at your company more than once, then suddenly that feedback can be seen as multiple rejections. It can be disheartening for applicants to receive multiple reasons why they have been turned down for the job over and over again.

It’s Time Consuming – Giving real feedback can take time, especially if you have to edit the feedback and review it to ensure that it won’t hurt or offend the person receiving it. Not every company has that amount of time available to give each person detailed feedback.

How to Provide Feedback

Given these benefits and weaknesses, it’s difficult to know whether providing feedback is the best option. You may want to consider letting them know you’re willing to provide feedback without supplying it unsolicited, or you may want to limit the feedback to those that you may want at your company in the future.

Whatever you decide, it’s clear that giving applicants feedback can be beneficial. But you simply need to take the risks into consideration in the process.

More and more companies are changing the process they use to identify who they want to hire out of the pool of applicants. Some have added questionnaires, which they use to pre-screen applicants before determining who to call. Others add IQ tests. Some have:

Phone interviews

Skype Interviews

Panel interviews

First Interviews

Second Interviews

Third interviews

In between, they may ask for samples of work completed, have follow up phone calls, and more…

At some point, it’s too much.

The Upper Limit of Interviews and Candidate Vetting

There are some companies that do not do enough. They have maybe one interview and if they like the person they hire them. That’s not the best way to find new hires because there are simply too many variables that go into determining who is the right fit for your company.

But some businesses go too far with the opposite approach. They make the applicant go through an almost unreasonable amount of work for a job they still may not get. They have interview after interview. Extra interviews because someone was sick. Phone screenings. Asking for the creation of samples. Personality tests – on and on and on.

Businesses need to respect their candidates’ time, even while balancing the need for proper vetting. Often candidates need to take sick days just to get to an interview, or are putting in hours upon hours of work and time only to find they did not get the job. This process is gruelling and, in many cases, does more to hurt your ability to find great talent than it does help your cause:

Great Talent May Not Have Time – Those that are working may eventually not be able to continue to attend the interviews, or may decide it is no longer worth their time to do so. The more extensive the process, the more you may force out some potential contributors.

Interest Can Fade Quickly – Those that genuinely want to work for an employer but do not get one job may still apply for another in the future. That’s something that you want as a company: people that are interested in you. But if your process to hire is too extensive, applicants may want to avoid being forced to go through that process, take time off work, etc., only to not get the job again.

Too Much Information – Scientists often talk about what happens if you have too much data. At some point, if you look at data from a wide variety of sources, you may eventually find correlations and relationships where none exist. Think of it this way – if you have an IQ test, sample work, reference checks, and 5 interviews, at some point the applicant may mess up. But if they passed 95% of the process, at what point does that 5% no longer matter?

Process Leaks – There is a word of mouth component of applying for jobs. If someone has a bad experience with your company, they are going to tell their friends, and their friends are less likely to be willing to apply for jobs at your company in the future. Your process should make sense to anyone that applies. Truly amazing career opportunities, like those that pay well for notoriously great companies, can get away with a bit more because people will always want to work there. But other companies are not so lucky.

Turning You Down – Even if you choose to hire them, the more extensive the interview process the less likely they will be to accept the job or be excited that they work there. This is especially true for jobs that do not offer competitive pay or benefits. There are countless examples of companies that put applicants through hours upon hours of vetting, only for the applicant to turn down the job once offered because of their frustration.

So there is no specific number of interviews that is too many. There is also no rule about what you can make the person do. It is helpful to have a thorough process in place to make sure that you’re hiring the right people.

Just remember to be respectful of their time. The more you decide to put them through to get the job, the more the job will need to be worth it for the applicant, and justifiable for getting the position.

Candidate engagement is becoming the newest trend in improving the recruitment talent pool. Companies that use candidate engagement strategies are more likely to attract great talent, more likely to keep them interested, more likely to recommend you to others, and much more.

Even without realising it, many companies have strategies in place to create more engagement. For example, if you have testimonials from your employees on your website, that’s a form of engagement. If you have a recruiter connect with candidates on LinkedIn after they apply, you are engaging.

But there are many different ways to engage, and many different ways to improve how you engage.

Consider the following candidate engagement improvement strategies:

Treat Every Applicant Like You Want Them On Board – Every single person that applies or shows interest to your company should be treated like they will be an employee someday, even if they are nowhere near being an employee yet. Keep in touch with them, add them to some type of newsletter, let them know about open jobs – maybe even tell them some things they can do to improve their candidacy to you in the future. The more each candidate feels like you want them someday, even if it’s not yet the right time, the more engaged they will be.

Create a Broad Recruitment Channel – Run and operate multiple social media channels, have an active role in industry forums, show up at industry events. Do what you can to give exposure to your brand, your recruiters, and more. Create as many avenues as possible for people to get exposed to your business, and make it possible for them to contact you and engage with you from multiple places.

Send Them Possible Jobs – We touched on this earlier, but sending them jobs that may fit their skillset is a great way to improve engagement. It is a better strategy with larger companies that are more likely to have positions available, but sending them personalized open positions that may be relevant to their skillset is a great way to show them they matter.

Have A Good Recruitment Process – Your recruitment process also plays a role in engagement. Balance your need to get great information with the need to make sure that you’re doing your part to make the candidate comfortable. For example, opening your office for a late interview so that they do not have to take time off work shows them you really care about their time.

Give Candidates More and More Reasons – Focus on yourself as a company as well. What can you do to be more attractive as a company to potential candidates? Companies like Google and LinkedIn became famous for the things they do for their employees – free concerts, free food, unlimited days off, and more. You don’t have to become famous for yours, but you should be finding more ways to give people a reason to seek you out as an employer.

Candidate engagement isn’t easy. It takes good ideas, time, and a commitment to find ways to engage current and future applicants. But the time you spend can be a great tool for finding better talent, and getting more people interested in your company.

Recruitment is about finding and hiring the best possible candidates to fill open positions at your company. Every step you take – from the creation of the job advertisement to reviewing candidates to calling and interviewing those that stand out from the rest – is geared towards getting the best possible contributors into your company.But there is something that often gets lost throughout that process – the desire for candidates to want to work for

But there is something that often gets lost throughout that process – the desire for candidates to want to work for you, and to feel as though they actively want to become a part of your company.

Introduction to Candidate Engagement

The idea of engagement has been growing in popularity in businesses all over Australia, but it is often limited to employees. Employee engagement is the idea of integrating strategies that make the employee feel like they are truly a part of the company, where the company’s success is its personal success and those that work with you are family.Candidate engagement is similar.

Candidate engagement is similar. It is the strategy of trying to get candidates to feel like they want to be a part of your company, and that they are not just some random outsider that your company could do without. It’s making you seem like more than just an employer, and giving the candidate ways to interact and engage with the company beyond simply sending in an application.

Examples of Candidate Engagement

There are many different ways to engage candidates and make them feel more connected to your businesses. Some examples include:

Creating a marketing campaign that highlights what makes you a great place to work.

Engaging in recruitment and outreach on social media.

Have everyone in your company treat candidates like customers.

Think about what will make people interested in your business, and what will attract the interested in working for you. It’s important to come up with your own strategies for candidate engagement as well, because there are many opportunities out there, and the payoff for taking advantage of them can be pronounced.

Why is Candidate Engagement Important?

Candidate engagement has many benefits for employers:

It increases the frequency of applicants.

It increases the interest level of applicants.

It reduces the growing problem of candidate dropouts.

It helps new hires be more excited when they start work.

It spreads the word about your company to other potential applicants.

It can improve the quality of the talent pool, it can help provide damage control for those that aren’t taking the job, and so much more. If you haven’t yet considered candidate engagement, now may be the time to consider it. The earlier you get started, the more likely you will be able to see positive results.

Much of hiring is focused on what you need as a company. It’s about finding the talent that matches your company culture, the production needed at the position, and more. From the interview questions to the recruitment process, the focus is mostly on what you can do to make sure you’re identifying the right talent.

But it’s important not to lose track of the candidate experience as well, and one of the major challenges that many companies are facing is candidate dropout. This is when a good candidate – possible the candidate you planned to hire – decides to withdraw their name from contention or turns down the job in some way.

The Problem of Candidate Dropout

For many companies, candidate dropout is a real problem. Indeed, candidate dropout is, itself, a warning sign that something may be wrong with your hiring process. Usually, when someone receives an interview for a job they are happy, and stay in contention until the moment they are either hired, or told that the company is going to go a different direction.

If someone is turning down interviews, or has decided they are no longer interested in the position in some way, it may mean:

You’re losing out on great applicants.

You’re doing something wrong that is affecting their interest.

Your company may have some type of negative PR, etc.

Perhaps the greatest issue is the first one. The most likely candidates to drop out of contention are those that feel they can get a job elsewhere, and often that implies that they know they are good candidates for other positions.

How to Reduce Candidate Dropout

Luckily, there are many different techniques, strategies, and tips that you can use to reduce candidate dropout. If dropout has become a problem in your hiring process, consider the following tips:

Make Yourself Available at Better Times – Not all dropout is due to something your company did or didn’t do. Sometimes it is caused by simply not being able to take time off for the interview. One strategy to consider is to make yourself available at times more convenient to the applicant, like after work. This helps ensure that you can hire those that are employed at demanding jobs.

Communicate With Them Often – Dropout sometimes occurs as a result of a lack of communication. Many companies spend weeks at a time failing to communicate whether or not the person got the job (or even the next interview). Frequent updates go a long way towards ensuring that the candidate retains their interest.

Respect Their Time – Similar to making yourself available, you should also make sure you’re respecting their time. That means trying to bunch interviews together, rather than forcing the individual to travel for 3, 4, or 5 interviews. It means knowing that they are taking time off work, and not dilly-dallying around and wasting their valuable sick days. Respect the time of each candidate you call.

Shorten Your Hiring Time – The longer it takes for you to make a decision, the more likely the candidate is going to move on. Try to hire quickly and efficiently to keep interest level in the position high, and reduce the risk of the applicants finding other positions they get more excited about.

Know What the Employee Sees About You Online – If you have negative reviews of your workplace, or any PR that may turn people off from working for you, the applicant is going to see it. Be aware of this feedback and address it in some way, because everyone that is applying for your job will do their research.

Give Them Reasons to Work With You – We discuss this a lot here at Recruit Shop, but as a company, it’s important to make sure you’re offering something that other companies are not offering. They should have a desire to work for you, because you represent something more than just a salary. Try integrating strategies into your business that will turn on possible talent.

Show Them How You Match Them – Sometimes all you need to do is make sure they recognise how well you fit their needs. Consider what you have learned about them through the interview process and show them that you’re the employer best suited both for their abilities and their personality.

Make the Interviews Engaging – When an interview is too rigid and formal, it can be an intimidating and discomforting experience for the applicant. Make the interviews more engaging. You can do this by having them take place at a coffee shop, telling them more about the great parts of your workplace, etc.

Offer Jobs Fast – If you think you may hire them, don’t waste any time letting them know. One of the greatest mistakes companies make is taking too much time. The applicant is looking for an answer, because they need to move on with their needs as well. Companies that take too long to offer the job tend to cause applicants to look for better work.

Each of these strategies has the potential to reduce candidate dropout, which should be a priority for all companies. The more likely someone is to withdraw their name, the more you’re losing out on potentially great contributors.

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Part of the salary negotiation process involves arming yourself with knowledge. You, as the employer, want to make an offer that is fair to the skill level of the employee, but you also want to make sure that you’re spending as little as possible. If you give a number, and the applicant comes back with […]

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